The peas are shootin' up!

A gardening update: my garden is starting to take real shape. A few things I noticed while I was working in my plot today, some more surprising than others:

• I have a renegade lettuce problem. Oh sure, the romaine I have in the ground is doing nicely, but I have a whole lot of lettuce sprouting up all over my plot. This happened after my lettuce plants bolted last year. At least I liked the lettuce. Now I'll not have to buy lettuce at all this summer.
• My sweet peas and snow peas are coming in even more nicely. I have never grown peas so I was surprised to see how fast they shot up after just a few weeks. I also have some big ass onions and some carrots, cabbages and potatoes shooting up.
  
• Is my corn supposed to be growing already?
  
• As I've said before, I had no idea that mint and oregano would grow so wildly. I'll be constantly pruning this stuff back all year. I hope it doesn't strangle out the parsley I just planted.
• I finally put those peanuts in the ground. These may not sprout for a good while. I'll keep you all posted.
  

Back in the Garden

It's refreshing to finally be back in my garden plot at Clifton Park. I found out today that mint really does grow like a weed. It grows EVERYWHERE, man. A month ago when I saw the dead-looking plant I thought "Oh well, that was nice while it lasted". Now the entire raised bed that I planted it in is covered in the stuff, much more so than the oregano that was growing and pulsating like it was alive. Also got a little sage out and planted some basil (too early perhaps) and dill (just right timewise). That and the guy that manages our little communal garden let me have some of his romaine and kale sproutlings.

A few random bites: late March edition

In like a lion and out like a cold, wet lamb: that's March for you. Just a few items as we ease slowly into spring.

1) I recently boiled peanuts (you'll read about it in a few weeks). It's hard to find raw peanuts in this area, though you can find them at Giant. I have decided to try growing them myself. I've rented a second garden plot in the city, which I hope to start clearing this weekend. Most of it will be for straightforward vegetable and herb planting, while a section of it will be purely experimental. We are about as far north as one can go and still hope for some success in growing peanuts. Let's see how it goes.

2a) I spent this past weekend in Rehoboth with a large group of friends (Some of you are reading - thank you again for a fun weekend! I'm already looking forward to next year). I ate out at a few places. One place where the cupcake trend hopefully continues is the Cake Break on First Street. For $6 (each for $3) I got two fascinating cupcakes.


My favorite one was their Guinness cupcake: a cupcake with Guinness Stout baked into the batter, and topped with frosting infused with Bailey's Irish Cream. This was evil. Evil, I tell you. And so good. The other cupcake was their Rehoboth Beach cupcake which I must only describe as "adorable" (oh God, I hate myself for saying that). It was made to look like a crab crawling out of the surf onto the sand. The crab tasted good too.

2b) While the best food was that which my friends made (again, kudos on the gumbo, Jim & Ralf), the best restaurant food I had came on my way out of Reho. La Tonalteca (note: their website is less than impressive) is a southern Delaware franchise of Mexican restaurants that had some pretty good Mexican food, some of the best I have had this side of the Mississippi. I got one of many of their lunch specials, an enchiladas poblanas, two enchiladas covered in mole poblano.


Everything about the enchiladas was delicious - these were no warmed over sorry excuses for enchiladas. As for the rice and beans: even in California, it is rare for me to find rice and beans that are worth eating, much less finishing. The rice was fluffy and soft and the beans were smooth, and neither was too salty. This may be a go-to stop on my way out of Rehoboth the next time I head down, especially at $6 for the whole thing.

3) A few weeks ago I saw the cleverly named Naanwich from Sukhi's, at Whole Foods. The one I got was a simple helping of tandoori chicken inside a folded-over piece of naan bread. While I wouldn't buy this all the time, it is convenient and tasty, the chicken soft and flavorful enough to not be a waste of time, and the naan pleasantly soft and chewy.


4) And finally, this from Churchville, Harford County:


And remember: Haste makes Waste Waist... get bigger!

He's BAAAAAAAAAAACK...

The sabbatical is over! It's going to be strangely difficult to get the juices flowing again. So why not just start with a few random, food-related observations that I have had over the last two months:

1) One actually hits oneself in the head when one goes on sabbatical just before the Baltimore City Paper informs one of one's blog's "Best of Baltimore" status. But one still feels very groovy.

2) When you spend four years writing a food blog and then suddenly stop, you start feeling the need to just start writing about your recipes and restaurant visits, only to remember that you're not writing it right now.

3) Drinking more water before you drink soda (which is not something you ought to be drinking anyway) really does cut down your overall desire to drink the caffeinated stuff. I'm drinking less soda now, which is always good.

4) Dad spent a weekend a few months ago in St. Joseph's Medical Center. They don't have many patients (I guess they all went next door to GBMC). In fact, they don't have many of anyone - doctors, nurses, patients or visitors. It's like one of those abandoned hospitals in the Silent Hill game series, only without the monsters and gore on the walls.

4a) I mention St. Joseph's because they do something I've never seen a hospital do: room service for visitors! Yes, you too can order stuff off the menu to eat right alongside dear old Dad, Uncle Bob or Mee-Maw, anything at all for just $5. Even more surprising: it's actually not half-bad. For hospital food, it's quite good. For hospital food.

4b) You do not, however, want to eat the food at your local hospice care facility. Nasty as sin. They want these people to actually eat, right?

5) Graul's Market actually sells bags of pre-baked Maryland Beaten Biscuits! Maybe it's just my bag, but they taste a wee bit freezer-burnt. Must make my own.

6) Over the last few months, my sister tried to put my niece, who has autism, on a gluten-free diet. It didn't work very well, but one plus came out of it: my notoriously picky eater of a niece actually started eating new and different foods. Note that she did not finish all of them. I picked up some gluten-free cupcakes from the Sweet Sin Bakery. Their cupcakes are lovely. I like them a lot and plan to get more for myself. None for my niece, however. You should have seen the face she made when she bit into her gluten-free chocolate cupcake: anticipatory, then immediately plummeting into equal parts confused and none-too-pleased. I felt bad. Oh well. More for me.

7) Marie Louise Bistro has been getting better every time I visit. But remember: if you order their crème brûlée, just keep in mind that it isn't actual crème brûlée.

8) Look what I just made!


Plus, I made a lobster roll for the first time, from a lobster I steamed just a little while before. I was tempted to use my wasabi mayonnaise, but I wanted to do my first one "authentically", the way they do up in New England.

9) My gardening has gotten more adventurous, and next year I am planning to take up a second plot! Some of my successes this year: lettuce galore, lots of Roma tomatoes (grown from seed - so proud of that), chilies out the wazoo, potatoes, kale greens, herbs (basil, rue, sage, rosemary, cilantro that bolted, and more oregano and mint than I will ever be able to use). Failures: garlic, strawberries (a total of four edible berries, and right over an ant nest too), and cauliflower. Don't ask me about it.

10) My friend Eric has fallen in love with the New York Times recipe section. Loved a lamb in parchment recipe he made for a few of us recently. But I will still needle him for not reading ahead to where it said the lamb must stay in the oven for 2 1/2 hours. (Not going to discuss that one time that I did the same thing...)

11) The next time you go to see a friend in a play, make sure you reserve tickets ahead of time.

12) Recent food finds that have become an even more important part of my culinary landscape: the nut-free brownies at Graul's; home-strained, Greekified yogurt; the English Rose and Key Lime flavored cupcakes from Iced Gems Baking; just about anything at the Haute Dog Carte; and at least one beer from each brewery that came to the Wine Source for Baltimore Beer Week 2010.

That is it for now. Over the next week or so I am rolling out my return to the Beltway Snacking series. And stay tuned for a brand new long-term project.

So much pesto...

I accidentally let some of my basil go to flower in the garden. A little of it was bitter - as what normally happens when basil plants go to flower. I ended up harvesting about half of the basil I had in my garden plot at Clifton Park. I now have a good cup and a half of pesto, and a seemingly endless supply of basil. In fact, not just basil, but also mint (lots of uses for that), oregano (same) and rue (I used it in a recipe once). In addition, I picked a few tomatoes, including some San Marzanos that I grew from seed (I have lots of green San Marzano tomatoes). Also got some chilies, and a squash that another person just up and gave me since he was going out of town. In fact, he also let me have as many squash blossoms as I could gather, since the plant was about at the end of its rope. I hope to use them in some Mexican-style recipes soon enough.

Nigella's Bacon and Tomato Hash

I decided to start using up the many things that are just sitting and biding their time in my fridge, before they start molding over, with some Nigella love. Since I had all the ingredients for her bacon and tomato hash on hand (I saw this recipe yesterday on the Cooking Channel, mind you), I went ahead and made that. It turned out a little like the bacon wot that I made for the Great Grapes cooking contest in June, only wetter. It was also a great way to use up some of the tomatoes I got from my garden but haven't had time to do anything with yet.

Just take a few tablespoons of olive oil, heat, and add four thick slices of bacon cut into square pieces. Cook until kind of crispy. I added some more of that Berbere spice I just have lying around. Anyway, add two sliced cloves of garlic and two big juicy tomatoes. I also threw in a banana pepper or two from my garden just for extra flavor. Cook a few more minutes and serve. I am eating mine with rice and some roasted squash, and a bit of cilantro that went to flower. It's still good. You can eat the flowers, you know.

My Very Own Broccoli

Out of all the broccoli that I planted in my plot at Clifton Park - most of the seeds never even sprouted, and of the few that did, most got eaten by bugs - this little head was all I ended up with:


I grew it from a seedling I let start right outside. Three and a half months later, I fix it up. I figured it would probably be the best-tasting broccoli I had ever eaten.


And it was.

Lunch today

Very simple: chicken salad on lettuce leaves from lettuce I grew myself. The chicken salad is the lovely stuff from Graul's. Yes, it was because I ran out of bread. Now I don't think i can ever eat it with bread again.

The Littlest Potato

I just picked this at my plot in Clifton Park while I was weeding and otherwise tending to my garden. Most of my potatoes will certainly be much larger than this when I finally do dig them up, but still:

Isn't it cute!?!?!?

Taro Update

I stuck a taro root that I got from H Mart into some potting soil & put it on my porch about a month and a half ago. Just in the last week, it's started shooting up.

This was completely non-existent a week ago:

My first strawberry!

I bet it'll taste ten times better than those sorry excuses for "strawberries" they sell in the supermarket.

Up next in my food ethnography series...

One hint: it's a place where they eat a lot of taro.

My seeds are sprouting!

One week after starting them. The ones on the left are Roma tomatoes. Look at them all! Next to them is a scraggly little catnip sprout I just saw today, and then a sweet pepper sprout. My chili peppers aren't sprouting yet.

The Urban Farming Experiment

I recently rented a plot of land at the urban garden at Clifton Park. It's part of the Baltimore City Farms project, to get people to start growing their own food. I haven't planted anything in years, not since I lived in SoCal (what about that earthquake, huh?) and had a little yard I grew things in. So I am going to start small, first by setting up the plot (in the process now) and then planting in it. A friend who has been growing stuff there for years recommended Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening, now in a new edition! I'm finding it helpful.

I've started some seeds inside, and I'm trying to figure out exactly where to leave them in my apartment. For now I've put the seed starters in my kitchen window. I am growing Romas, chili peppers, bell peppers and catnip indoors. Will try plant carrots, lettuce and onions outdoors.